1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data transmission device, a data transmission system and an address registration method, and in particular to technology for facilitating managing information necessary for data transmission.
2. Related Art
In recent years, it has become common for MFPs (Multi Function Peripherals) that transmit image data with the use of facsimile, e-mail, and other means of communication to have a pre-registered list of addresses (an address book) from which a user selects, in order to save the user the trouble of inputting an address.
However, when a plurality of MFPs are used together in an office environment etc., registering addresses and updating the address book in each MFP is troublesome. For this reason, various technologies have been provided in which addresses are collectively managed with use of an address management device, and address information is provided to the MFPs from the address management device.
One example is LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, IETF RFC 2251˜2256). LDAP is a protocol for accessing a database that manages information pertaining to e-mail addresses and environments on the Internet, an intranet, etc., and for providing address information to an MFP from an LDAP server.
When a plurality of users share an MFP, there are cases in which a large number of addresses are registered in the address book and finding a desired address is difficult, and there are cases in which an address must be kept private from other users. In such cases, it is desirable to manage a separate address book for each user.
However, since LDAP servers cannot manage user-specific address books, there is a need to newly provide a specialized address management device for managing user-specific address books.
At the same time, since LDAP servers often manage data used by the MFPs other than address books, keeping the original LDAP server is necessary even after the new address management device has been installed.
When an LDAP server and an address management device are used together, various data must be registered and updated in both the LDAP server and the address management device, and this management is troublesome. The same problem occurs when managing address information on a device other than an LDAP server.